Angelo’s Review

• 4th Jul 2011

Angelo’s is a comedy sitcom based in London’s Trafalgar Square and set in a greasy spoon café. After being apparently four years in development, it was broadcast in 2007 on Channel 5 and then moved on to the Paramount Comedy Channel.

Angelo’s is written by Sharon Horgan (Pulling, Annually Retentive) who also stars in it. She recently wrote an article in the Guardian celebrating great sitcoms that failed to make it big and explained that with a smaller audience one is more likely to push boundaries and one can do a lot of things a mainstream sitcom would like to but can’t. Angelo’s is certainly an unorthodox comedy with a mix of surreal zany characters brought together at Angelo’s cafe.

Angelo (Steve Brody) is the Italian café owner who loves the Queen Mum, complains about tourists spending all day sitting around drinking one cup of coffee and speaks in a very odd ‘Italian cockney’ style.  His daughter, Maria (Shelly Longworth) helps in the café but has her heart set on being on the X-Factor. She often belts out a raunchy mix of songs which her father thinks are wonderful and clearly doesn’t understand the explicit lyrics. Alicia (Alice Lowe) is Maria’s best friend who seems to want Maria’s life and even makes a play for Maria’s boyfriend, Mickey (Javone Prince).

Karen (the writer herself, Sharon Horgan) and Dave (Paul Garner) are a married couple, both police officers, who unrealistically seem to go on the beat together all the time. Karen is desperate for a child and blames Dave for their lack of success and even considers asking Dave’s dodgy “seed sower” brother, Kevin (Paul Kaye) for assistance.

The only member of the cast I instantly recognised was Miranda Hart, the creator of very successful BBC1 sitcom Miranda. She plays Shelley, an illegal cab driver who treats every passenger in her cab to graphic confessions about her love life and how she’s saving herself for the one, terrifying them all in the process. The other two characters in this sitcom are Kris (Simon Farnaby) and Russell (Kim Wall), both of which I wish we had more dialogue from. Russell has been made redundant but not told his wife and spends most of his time in the café searching job advertisements. Kris has an unrequited crush on Maria, and is a struggling actor who paints himself gold and charges gullible tourists £2 for a picture.

I thought Angelo’s was an average watch. Many of the characters were memorable but slightly vacuous. The dialogue was rather predictable bordering on tiresome and the blend of characters was good but a little too optimistic. There was a need for a very strong lead that would bring the diverse characters together and Angelo as the café owner certainly didn’t do that as he was dull and wholly unentertaining. The concept of a comedy based in a café has been done very successfully in other comedies notably the Friends and this certainly is not the British version of that. Having said that, there were scenes which I laughed at and so I would say probably worth a watch if you don’t want anything too groundbreaking.

Mo Tulloch